Google Earth

       While discovering Google Earth, I learned that Mars has a traveler's guide to help aliens such as myself learn more about the foreign planet. A cool feature, the Saturn icon allows users of Google Earth to explore different parts of our solar system. I chose Mars and was blown away by how much research is still an ongoing process about the planet closest to the sun. NASA uploads real photos of Mars with scientific understandings, explaining what the pictures were about. I am a social studies concentration, and still found this feature really interesting, and applicable to what I can teach in my own classroom.

       I will use Google Earth in my classroom because Richard Byme has excellent resources for multiple different content areas. By downloading his U.S history tours into Google Earth, spots of specific battles of wars are highlighted, and when clicked on, a short summary of that specific battle can be found. I thought this was an awesome tool and never imagined that Google Earth could be used for this. Google Earth is a great tool for giving kids a spacial representation of what happened and where it happened. Usually when kids learn about battles, they have a hard time placing them on the map and conceptualizing how a course of a war transpired. With Google Earth, it really captures both of those ideas, and puts them into practice wonderfully. What an amazing tool to use in the classroom, I am applauding and thanking Google Earth and the ingenuity of Mr. Byme!